This has to do with the reason issues surounding google's business in mainland China and the refusing to censor results on google.com.cnYet, from all the info I can find they should only be redirecting traffic from http://www.google.com.cn to the .hk site.

I guess rather than just using a simple domain redirect some genius decided to geo-filter Mainland Chinese IP addresses and redirect traffic from ALL google search sites to google.com.hk

http://www.google.com/ncr is supposed to be the address that will never redirect you to a regional search site but instead will ALWAYS give you regular old google.com - on the .hk site (as with all regional versions of the google search page) there is a link at the bottom that says "Go to Google.com" which uses this http://www.google.com/ncr to avoid geolocational redirecting. It also says in their help pages that this address will NEVER redirect and will always give you google.com - yet this also gets redirected to the .hk page now. So on the HK page that link is simply a lie and won't actually take you to google.com it won't really go anywhere.

http://www.google.com.uk and .us appear to be redirected by someone other than google (the great firewall) to some Chinese search site. If these sites were not blocked by China though, I am certain they would simply redirect to the .hk site because all traffic from within Mainland China for any of googles search pages is being redirected to the .hk site by google themselves.

Can someone please make sure that the people at google realize that their .cn to .hk redirect was implemented by a moron who decided to geo-filter all Chinese IPs and redirect all Chinese traffic to ALL their search sites to the .hk page instead of just using a simple domain redirect for .cn to .hk? Make sure they realize that the "Go to Google.com" link at the bottom of the .hk page doesn't even work at all for all users within China?

I suspect that the decision makers at google did not have this in mind when they told the code monkeys to redirect .cn traffic to .hk so please someone make sure they know what the code monkeys did..

I also hope that google just leaves well enough alone. There is no need to pick a fight with China over this. Google is just shooting themselves in the foot. Don't redirect traffic from .cn to .hk at all. Just closing the .cn site was enough, and users who actually care will find the .hk easily enough on their own, or they'll just use the regular .com site. The redirect is just thumbing your nose at the Chinese gov and it will only cause them to retaliate by blocking more if not all google sites which will only hurt your users here in the mainland even more. Better if we can still access your search engine you know, but if you thumb your nose at the gov here then we will likely not be able to access google at all! For a company that is supposed to be run by super-geniuses google is acting very stupid and childish right now.

But certainly don't redirect ALL traffic from here to ALL google search sites to the .hk site. That doesn't make any sense and is going to drive all the hundreds of thousands of foreigners here INSANE because we could care less about what happens to google.cn or .hk we just want to use www.google.com already!

I just read a report where another user said that if they accessed
Google through iGoogle, they were able to successfully get to google.com through the [Go to Google.com] link on the iGoogle page.Are you using iGoogle or the Classic Home page?

Thanks Kaleh, that does help. You have to use the .hk igoogle page, then click "Go to Google.com" at the bottom, then it takes you to a different (U.S.?) igoogle page, then there you have to click "Classic Home" at the top of the page, and then you get a page that looks like the regular google.com page but the address is actually http://www.google.com/webhp?rls=ig which is an address that you can actually use directly.

Really funky, and I still hope they'll fix this ASAP.

Oh it seems that it is all fixed now. google.com is no longer redirecting to .hk and the .hk google.com link is working.

I still think it is a VERY BAD IDEA for google to redirect traffic from the closed .cn site to the .hk site though. Like I said, this is just antagonistic, it is like a childish insult to the gov here and it is just asking for trouble. I really hope google comes to their senses and just stops with the redirect, instead just let people find the .hk site on their own if they want to.